Becoming more conscious
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25f
To be dead means to be unconscious. So “whoever lives” is conscious and can see into the spiritual worlds as clearly as they see into the physical world.
Although most of us have some more work to do in this area, it is not an impossible task; we can make a beginning and there are many aids. Knowledge, real spiritual truth is the best aid. Not theory, as we spoke of it in the last reflection, but living knowledge that quickens us.
Connecting with our I AM resurrects our consciousness from a dead earthly consciousness to a living spiritual consciousness. This does not mean to be psychic; when we are psychic our consciousness is lowered. Anything that lowers or removes consciousness belongs to the past, it is not part of our current evolution and the I AM will have nothing to do with it. Clairvoyance is about thinking, pure thinking, a resurrected living thinking that gives insight into the reality of the cosmos.
Many people are becoming and more and more conscious. Conscious past life memories are increasing. Stories like this are emerging everywhere; a lady visited the ruins of a castle in the UK and as she looked in through the entrance she saw the events that took place in the castle centuries ago as if she had stepped into a movie.
We are beginning to become more conscious in other areas also. All through the day we do, say and think many, many things. Of course we are aware of these things but are we fully aware of all the implications? Sure we see the smile on the face of the person who experiences our good deeds, or scowl for the bad deeds, but that is only half the story.
Every good deed creates warmth in the cosmos. Every loving, thoughtful deed creates warmth which radiates to the Hierarchies and souls in the spiritual worlds. Bright luminous rays result from our good and creative actions. Darkness and cold result from selfish, harmful deeds and thoughts.
So even though we are usually aware of our actions, and the response it brings, this is not the complete story. Every night when we sleep we take these deeds, our words and our thoughts into the spiritual worlds and at the same time they are stored in our semi-conscious levels. The one who is connecting up with their I AM becomes more conscious that their experiences are incomplete, that there is another side to their deeds; they feel maimed, as if a hand or an eye were removed. It is painful. So ordinary life cheats us of the full experience and we bear this as pain.
When people talk about the wing beat of a butterfly causing a storm somewhere, never mind about something happening on the other side of the world, what about striving to become aware of the full effects of each and every act, word and even thought in our own life.
It is when we die, as we stand in our I AMness, that we experience the other side of our deeds. The beings of the Hierarchies look on our earthly actions and we experience, like spiritual rain, their like and dislike for our words, thoughts and deeds. All our goodness is illuminated by the sympathies of these lofty beings and deposited into the communal cosmic bank. Antipathies of the Hierarchies for any of our deeds fill us with a deep urge to grasp them to ourself so that they do not contaminate the universe. So our destiny, our karma arises from our deep sense of responsibility for the cosmos. We know that our next incarnation will be the opportunity to put it right.
So then it does seem strange that we should squeal and complain about the difficulties life presents – we have chosen them out of our deep sense of responsibility for the Cosmos.
Another thing that is becoming more conscious is the true nature of our I AMness. The I AM that we express each day is really the I AM that we developed in our last life. Do you sometimes feel that you fall short of your potential? Or think that others do? Do you sometimes wonder why others don’t see who you really are? This stems from the fact that your “I”, which is the sum total of all your past lives, expresses itself to the point that you got to when you last died. The I AM you are continuing to develop now is still in-the-making and won’t be expressed in its fullness till your next incarnation. But we can feel this resurrection – “I AM the resurrection” – within us now as a reality. This is why the more Christ enters our life, the more conscious we become and we can begin to express more of our I AM now. “he who believes in me[the I am], though he die, yet shall he live,”.
[based on ideas from “Anthroposophy and the Inner Life.” Lecture 8, Feb 9 1924]
Pain, Knowledge and Purification
Kristina - thank you for these timely reflections.
For me, the progress of time makes me more aware that pain may be connected to realising and becoming conscious of the fullness of my being in the way described here.
Perhaps when I experience someone outside me as bringing me painful experiences, this could be revealing the fruits of an imperfection of my own from a previous lifetime with this person. Perhaps the karmic connection is starting to reveal itself to me, but I am not able to bear the full truth of it yet. But I can press on in hope!
That is my experience too Tim
Becoming conscious is a big work. I think this is why we need the objectivity of the I AM and the experience of the presence of Christ. I have probably mentioned this before - the idea of powerlessness that Steiner puts forward, specifically in his Lecture dated 16 October 1918 published in "Evil" http://www.steinerbooks.org/detail.html?id=1855840464 While Steiner doesn't mention pain specifically, he certainly points to the need to actually experience the powerlessness (or pain) and not withdraw from it as is our natural inclination.
"Those who do not have supersensible perception cannot of course have direct vision of this impulse, but they can experience its effect within themselves. And when they experience it they discover an answer to the question: How do I find the Christ?
For this to happen, the following experiences are needed. First, of undertaking to strive for self-knowledge to the extent allowed by one’s very individual, personal human capacities. Everyone who is honest in this striving will have to concede that he cannot actually attain what he seeks, that his powers are insufficient, that he feels weak and powerless to achieve his aims. This is a very important experience, one which every person must have who genuinely seeks self-knowledge. The feeling of incapacity and powerlessness is healthy, for it is nothing other than a sense of the illness and ailment afflicting us, which is the first step on the path to recovery – for those who suffer from an illness and do not even know they are ill are in the worst state of all. The feeling that we are powerless to elevate ourselves to the divine is an expression of this illness I spoke of that has been implanted in us. Experiencing this illness within ourselves gives us a sense of the soul as burdened by the body’s mortality – that it too would have to die. If we experience this feeling of powerlessness strongly enough then we can suddenly turn the corner, receive the opposite experience: the feeling that if we refrain from immersing ourselves in what our physical powers alone can provide, if we immerse ourselves instead in the gifts of the spirit, then we can overcome this inner soul-death. We can find our soul again and unite with the spirit. We can sense the emptiness of existence on one hand and its glorification through ourselves on the other, once we step beyond our feelings of powerlessness. We can sense our illness and incapacity through our powerlessness; but we can also sense the Saviour, the healing power, by plumbing the depths of this powerlessness and acquainting our souls with death. When we sense the Healer we feel that we bear something in our soul that can at any moment resurrect from death within our own inner experience. These two experiences belong together. When we seek both of them we can find Christ within our own soul."
Pain and Purification
Kristina and Tim,
Thank you for your wise words. I also experience pain and weakness that you wrote about. One day I opened St. Paul’s 2 Corinthians (12:9) and read:
”And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
They are not only words – we can really experience them deeply.
I think, one of the pictures by violetteiris reflects it in the best way: http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/1269